TSP Still Grappling With High Call, Loan
Volume

Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) Executive Director Gary Amelio
told the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board at a
Monday meeting that a problem with the system’s Web site
has been fixed (See
Federal Pension
Officials: System to be Fixed By September
) and that a resulting backlog of 70,000 paper
transactions has been “virtually eliminated,” according to
a report on govexec.com. Programmers are still ferreting
out and correcting other bugs in the system, including a
lag time in password changes and daily updates.

But the TSP system is still not without its significant
glitches – particularly in its call centers.
“One unusual circumstance with our ThriftLine is that 79%
of the callers are opting to go to a live operator,” Amelio
told the board, according to the govexec.com report. “That
is an astounding number, and since so many are opting for
the operator, they’re getting jammed up. I know that’s
frustrating.”

Going forward, TSP officials say they still have to get
a better handle on the mountainous level of plan loan
requests. TSP participants are able to have two loans at a
time and can refinance an existing loan, he explained.
According to Amelio, about 500,000 TSP members hold 800,000
loans. “This is a retirement plan, it’s not a credit union,
and we are not geared to deal with this kind of
transactional activity, ” the administrator said.

Amelio suggested board members consider requiring
members to wait up to 90 days to apply for a new loan after
paying off a loan, and limiting loans to one per
member.

When the much-ballyhooed daily valuation system opened
its electronic doors two months ago, participants hit an
instant roadblock when the Web glitch kept some of them
from accessing their accounts. While TSP officials tried to
find and fix the problem, they told the three million TSP
participants to access the system by telephone, but soon
the phone system was overwhelmed. Many repeatedly got busy
signals or were put on hold for long periods of time.

According to Lawrence Stiffler, director of TSP’s Office
of Automated Systems, before the new system was installed,
the ThriftLine received approximately 3,000 calls a day.
That number jumped to 37,000 calls a day in July, prompting
Verizon, the system’s phone company, to limit the number of
calls to the ThriftLine.

“They were only allowing so many calls through in a
period of time so that we didn’t bring down other phone
lines in that area,” Stiffler explained. Amelio
recommended that the ThriftLine be swapped for a
toll-free line, which would cost TSP participants $8
million a year.

The $113-billion retirement fund covers federal and
military employees and retirees and current and former
congressional members.